The present invention relates to a system for providing incentives to persons who book travel-related reservations by awarding credits to those persons based upon the travel-related reservations.
Travel agents and similar persons book most travel-related reservations. As an example, consider hotel reservations. Many customers book hotel reservations through a travel agent when the customer, for example, reserves airline tickets. Travel agents have a certain amount of discretion to recommend various hotels to travelers. Therefore, hotel companies have a strong interest in providing incentives for travel agents to recommend their hotels.
An incentives system that provides rewards to travel agents on a random basis is the World of Winners sweepstakes program, developed by Radisson Hotels International, Inc., the assignee of the present application. In the World of Winners sweepstakes program, for example, every tenth reservation booked in a particular hotel results in the travel agent receiving a reward or prize. The random nature of the World of Winners sweepstakes programs, however, reduces the incentive of travel agents to book travel-related reservations for particular hotels. When participating in such programs, travel agents do not know with certainty whether booking a hotel reservation for a particular hotel will result in an award.
Some systems have provided incentives to travel agencies based on booked reservations. These systems, however, do not necessarily provide personal incentives to individual travel agents, since the systems are not on-line and the agency itself receives any awards or prizes based on booked reservations. Companies providing travel services thus do not necessarily gain significant benefits from these programs, since the individual travel agents have much discretion in making reservations and are not necessarily motivated by incentives and awards for the agency.
Therefore, a need exists for a system which provides incentives for travel agents and similar persons to book particular travel-related reservations by awarding cumulative credits to those travel agents based upon the bookings.
A computerized awards credits to persons who book travel-related reservations. The system receives a booking format which includes a plurality of fields. At least one of the fields includes information identifying a travel-related reservation. The system further transmits a code which identifies a person who created or initiated the travel-related reservation. Upon receiving the travel-related reservation, the system cumulatively assigns credits to the person identified by the code based upon the travel-related reservation. Therefore, persons who enter travel-related reservations may build up credits over time and use those credits to receive a particular incentive such as an award or prize.
The computerized method can also verify the credits according to predefined criteria, classify the credits as pending or redeemable, provide on-line feedback regarding credits which could have been assigned if the person did not elect to receive credits, or automatically provide an indication of incremental credits assigned for a travel-related reservation.